What prevents the application from being used for censorship or protection of personal data? Do social networks “explorer” us? Is our privacy at risk? Currently, Tik Tok is at the front because of the controversial measures taken by different governments, from the United States, Canada and the European Commission, preventing their government officials from using the platform, due to the possible risk of dissemination of relevant information.
All this with Marco Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and not long ago in various controversies for the sale of personal and private information obtained through the largest products, revived: Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. In parallel, during his administration, the former president of the United States, Donald Trump, decided to condemn TikTok in his country, while the current President Joe Biden denied the said decision. But it was the same statement: a potentially acceptable level of risk to people’s privacy and security.
READ ALSO The end of the trial against the man who abused his daughter and shared pornographic material
This proposal stems from accusations of data sales by the Chinese government that were made against the Chinese company ByteDance LTD (creators of Tik Tok). However, his justification has always been that the social network works differently in China than it does in the rest of the world. Moreover, its popularity is equally known everywhere.
This can create conflict for us, consumers or content creators, because seeing governments panic about something that is so present in our lives today – and even saying that this could lead to cyber security crimes – can be frightening. Especially when the accusations are aimed at different purposes: from the protection of our privacy to the fear of operations.
All these applications for daily consumption have millions of alternatives, as we can configure users, what information they get and also what our “followers” can notice. But how are we protected? Indeed, the more information we give, the better the algorithm recognizes us and the more time we spend enjoying the content of the social network.
